I was thinking about the issues surrounding pass block; both in it being hard to code, and of people not taking it that much iirc (from my lrb4 days).
In terms of a simple solution; one could just use disturbing presence in place of pass block.
It has much the same effect; interfere with passes that are near to you. It's just that pass block could give interception chances but also had a failure chance if you had to dodge. and maybe pass block was only with just one player; i don't remember.
Aside from those; both give a -1 on the pass or catch of someone near the player.

Yes true, but to use Pass Block you sometimes need to dodge and an opponent would have the ability to place screening defenders to make your pass block incredibly difficult to reach the receiver or thrower.

So, going by your route, I would not take Pass Block as it still wouldnt be worth it.

I use Pass Block more for the INT chance (high AG, NOS Elf Catchers or Slann with VVL) rather than for exerting -1 on the catch or pass.

As a non-coder, I dont understand the problem with passblock and its implementation... it worked in the old client, cant the code just be copied??

Still looking forward to PB being implemented someday. I have a zon catcher that dates back to my noob days who took is as a second skill. She since rolled +AG and +ST, and is the mainstay of the team. It would be nice to have that 20TS back up and running properly.

Pass Block:
0.When someone passes (the passing player shall be called the passer, the opposing player shall be called the defender), client looks for all players on the opposing team with passblock.
1. Client then places an interception bar from passing player to recieving player, and then makes a list of all defenders players who are within 3 squares of the interception bar.
2. Client then makes a list of all players that showed up in both 0 and 1.
3. Client then checks each player from 2 to see if it can legally move 3 squares to end up on the interception bar.
4. Client then pops up a menu of players from 3 for the defender to choose from.
5. Defender chooses a player.
6. Client then highlights (with a slightly darker highlight than the one used to indicate legal moves in a regular move action) all squares on the interception bar that are within 3 legal move squares (as determined in step 3) of the chosen player.
7. Defender then may move player as with a move action (this move shall be referred to as the pass block move) but only squares that bring the player legally closer to a square highlighted in step 6 are legal moves for the player (I say as with a move action to indicate that if you move in to a tackle zone, then that works just as with a regular move action, meaning you can't move past the tackle zone until you have moved in to the tackle zone, so that the defender will know he will be making a dodge attempt). If the player falls over, his pass block move ends, just as with a normal move action.
8. I don't know if you are allowed to take further pass block move actions if the current one ends due to knockdown. If you are not, then end here. If you are, or if the player successfully completes his pass block move, then go back and repeat steps 4-8 for each player in the list of step 3.

This should all be able to be done with the code already in place for interceptions and move actions, with the two big new things being highlighting legal 'end' squares for the pass block move, and determining a legal move of 3 squares; but determining a legal move should just be: put all squares adjacent to the intercept bar into a special array called legalendmoves. put all squares on the map into another array called array. Remove all squares that are more than 3 squares away from the pass block player. Remove all squares that contain another player. Now do a loop of size 8, each iteration moving into an adjacent square (if an adjacent square is not in the array, then end that iteration of the loop as not legal); now do a nested loop of size 8, each iteration moving into an adjacent square (if an adjacent square is not in the array, then that iteration of the loop as not legal); now do a third nested loop of size 8, each iteration moving into an adjacent square (if an adjacent square is not in the array or legalendmoves array, then end the iteration of the loop as not legal). If the third nested loop does not end as not legal, then that particular combination of 3 moves is legal, and gets listed in step 3.

The only other big problem is that this probably wouldn't be a very intuitive skill for new users, because they might end up doing dodges/tentacle checks/shadowing checks that they might not have needed to, but since that's purely on the user side, I think it would at least be a good place to start, and then once some use has been done, we could try to tweak it to be more user friendly.

Nelphine: please be reminded that Pass Block move is not an Action. This means for instance: no Wild Animal/Bloodlust/Bonehead etc, no Jump Up possible, Shadowing cannot be used to trace the moving player (but can be used to trace the thrower if it Diving Tackles... %-) ) and perhaps some other things.

There are similar difficulties in Bombardier, which makes up a nameless new Action that can be forced to use during the opponents turn...

yes but the thrower would be on the very first part of the intercept bar, so I'm including that as part of the intercept bar. If it's not, then you just extend the intercept bar one square in each direction to account for putting tackle zones on those guys.

Edit: At uuni: While it may be a nameless new action, coding in a new action should be something that has already been done for other things (like intercepts); and while you do have to put a new name on it, I wouldn't think the actual code will be that different from what we already have, with the exceptions I describe above.

Also note, I'm not saying it's easy; I'm saying that I think designing the algorithm shouldn't be that hard, based on what we already have. I also think getting intercepts to work would have been a nightmare originally, and the only reason pass block shouldn't be too bad is that you might be able to rip off a whole bunch of the intercept code that I so blithely skip by in my description.

Double Edit: I'm also not sure as to how Pass Block interacts with other skills, so I specifically didn't try to answer those questions, but rather indicated the steps where they would matter, IF they do interact

pardon me, I was referring to an action, as deemed by the client; intercepting is a 'something' (I don't want Kalimar calls it) that occurs during your opponents turn, and pass block would be similar to that, and so coding it should be able to rip right out of previously done code.